Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

SHE made ready to leave for the convent of St. Valeria in that twilight passage before dawn when all things stand betwixt and between.

“Can you not bide here?” she asked him, troubled because all yesterday evening he had gone about his business in such an unusual silence. “Until I return from St. Valeria?”

“To what purpose?” He turned as Ambrose set a covered pitcher of heated water down on the table beside the washbasin. Sanglant thanked the man. He was attentive to his servants. He knew their names and their histories and their skills and, it sometimes seemed, their sins. Ambrose poured. Sanglant washed his hands and face and accepted a cloth to dry himself. “Best march to Varre early in the season, before they expect me.”

“If your aunt has spoken in their favor, might she not already have sent word of your intentions to them?”

“She may have. Hesitation still does not serve me well. Conrad and Sabella gain the longer I wait.”

“Do they want Wendar, or only Varre?”

“Does it matter?” His expression dismayed her. He was Henry’s son. She must not forget that. Henry had ruled Wendar and Varre as had his father and grandfather before him. His heir must not lose what Henry had held so dear.

“What if there is a battle?” she asked.

He shook his head as Robert and Theodulf brought his under-tunic, leggings, and fine wool outer tunic. The dazzling blue seemed to shine in the dim room, which was lightened only by one burning lamp and the misty gray light, seen through the single open window, that heralded the coming day.

“Conrad does not want to fight me. His position remains strong as duke of Wayland. It is only Sabella who goads him on, if I am any judge of the matter. She eats at her bitterness. That is all that sustains her.”

“Fierce words. Are you sure?”

He lifted both hands. “I cannot answer so many questions for which there is no good answer. You know that. Do what you must, and catch up to me quickly.” He caught her shoulders, kissed her, and released her. “Go, before I change my mind. I have not forgotten about the galla we met upon the road. I also have in mind these stories of Lost Ones attacking helpless folk out in isolated villages and farmsteads.”

“Do not forget bandits,” she said, piqued by his strange mood. Anyway, she was scared, not for herself but for him. Yet this one thing she could not bring herself to say to him: Do not die, my love. Only do not die, and I will be content.

“Bandits are the least of it. Yet you are armed and shielded by a power I cannot match. Do not fear to use it, if you must.” He touched her on the arm, frowned at her, brushed a lock of black hair out of his eyes, and let her go. She blinked back tears, picked up her saddlebags, sword belt, and quiver, and left him.

Sickness dwelt in the pit of her stomach, a fear that made her heavy and weary and nauseated. This tangle had grown into an impossible maze.

He would be regnant because his father had asked it of him. Some supported him because they loved him. Others supported him because he rode with an army at his back. His own relatives played a deep game on the chessboard, offering him a pawn on the one hand while they lent their strength to his rivals with the other. Had he been Henry’s eldest legitimate child, there would have been no question, but he was not, and she was no fool. Her presence aided him not at all. What Theucinda said aloud snaked through the company like poison. It was Sanglant’s weakness that he would hear no word spoken against her, and hers that she could not sacrifice herself on the hearth of duty. Me for the sake of the kingdom. She could cast herself on the mercy of the unknown Mother Rothgard, pledge herself as a nun, and leave him free to marry as a man of his rank and position must, to save the kingdom in its darkest hour.

Ai, God! She laughed weakly, seeing her escort waiting. What a miserable nun or deacon she would make! Her life with Da had spoiled her. Like the twilight morning, she stood betwixt and between, not quite suited for anything and not quite willing to be content with that which it was reasonable and responsible to aspire to.

No doubt God frowned at her selfishness, but surely it were God who poured love into the world. Surely to turn away from love was to turn away from God.

Unanswerable.

Or else she had only posed the question in such a way that she could hear the answer she wanted.

4

SHE brooded all that day as her party traveled a little worn path, but still took time to remark on the cool late spring landscape. They followed a trail through hilly country. The great estates and farming lands of Saony lay several days’ ride west and east, anchored by Osterburg and Quedlinhame. Goslar was a hunting lodge built in uninhabited countryside where lords and regnants could find a profusion of game wandering the hills and dense forest.

None among the Eagles currently traveling with Sanglant had ever ridden this way, but Hathui had heard the directions from Wolfhere some years ago and had described them in detail to Liath. By late afternoon of the second day they would come to a small outpost, a free holding established by settlers given the imprimatur of King Arnulf the Elder. Beyond that a river crossing and another two days’ journey would bring them to the convent, sequestered in a tiny valley among rugged hills.

Liath walked in the van beside Captain Thiadbold, setting the pace along the soggy track. Her horse, saddled, was led by a groom. Ernst and Rufus rode behind her. Fore and back came the rest of the company, two-score Lions under the command of Thiadbold. Not as swift as horsemen, but, Sanglant had noted, a seasoned captain with disciplined infantrymen in his command would serve best for a journey through the wild forest hills. Common knowledge told that St. Valeria lay hidden in the hills so that the holy nuns who used scholarship to battle evil might make their study in peace. Or be cut off so none of them, tempted by the hope of power wielded through the black arts, could easily escape into the wider world.

“Although it seems to me,” she said to Thiadbold, with whom she was having this conversation, “there are folk aplenty who dabble in the black arts hoping to make their crops prosper or their heir fertile, or their rival barren. Would it not be better to train folk to combat it in its turn?”

“That may be. But some such folk will be tempted to use their power for ill, against the neighbors they’re supposed to help.”

“They do that anyway.”

“That’s true enough. The miller in my village was a prosperous man. He got a lust for a girl—a cousin of mine as it happens—and put out his old wife and made it plain to my aunt and uncle that he’d grind no grain until they gave the girl to him. They went to the deacon, who refused to help them because the miller tithed generously and she did not wish to offend him.”

“So you see, my point is made.”

His answering smile held a touch of irony. “The story’s not done. He beat her and treated her cruelly, so at length her parents went to the lord to beg him to intercede. And when he saw the girl, he took her away to become his concubine.”